RRPD delivers tons of food to local food pantries

RIO RANCHO — It was a beautiful day for many reasons at the local food pantries with the main one being that they received a lot of food Nov. 23.

The Rio Rancho population stepped up to the dinner plate when the Rio Rancho Police Department held its annual food drive Saturday.

The 16-year-old tradition is just one of the many services RRPD provides for the city. Capt. Jacquelynn Reedy and Officer Daisy Gomez were excited to get the community together again.

“It’s been going on longer than I’ve been here. It’s just something that Rio Rancho Police has always spearheaded every holiday season. It started kind of as a competition on which division of the department could raise the most amount of food. It used to be like a competitive thing. Like is it going to be traffic or SWAT?” Reedy said. “Just a way that we can, as a department, try to mitigate food insecurity in the city of Rio Rancho,” she added.

She says the food drive donations always go to local pantries. This year both St. Felix Pantry and Storehouse West received literally tons of donations.

While Gomez has participated since she started at RRPD, this is her first year organizing it. She says many of the divisions are participating.

“We have our division with the support services division that’s helping. We also have SWAT. We have our traffic division and we have some of our crime scene investigators that are helping as well,” she said.

This year, Gomez says officer energy was really good. They all made signs for each of the donation sites. From early Saturday morning to about noon, they were collecting at the various grocery stores. Donations from the two local Walmarts were very full as well as both Albertsons locations. Additionally, a decent amount came from the new Sprouts in Enchanted Hills.

St. Felix Pantry was already busting at the seams when RRPD arrived with donations.

The new president and CEO, Tim Sheahan, was grinning ear to ear as hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food were dropped off.

“We’re very lucky. I’m very blessed. The thing is we always need more because you never know what’s going on with everybody,” he said.

He added that this time of year is as good a time as any to stock up on food.

“Because we know after Christmas, it gets really, really low. So we try to keep that food going continually year round because people need it,” Sheahan said.

He says since he took up the position in October the amount of food donated has been “crazy.”

“I got a great team here but also we have like 15 to 20 volunteers every day here, and that makes a big difference. We couldn’t do without them,” he said.

Mayor Gregg Hull and Chief Stewart Steele were both at St. Felix during the drive.

Hull was amazed at how the community came out to donate.

“Rio Rancho stepped up in a big way, and I’m so proud of my community and I’m proud of the way when we put out the call and we ask people to help, the way our community just comes together to help each and every time. I could not be prouder right now,” he said as he loaded food into crates at the pantry.

For him, donating and volunteering time for the food drive was necessary, and not just because he is the mayor.

“I love doing this because I’m a citizen, too. I live here in Rio Rancho. We’ve been a part of this for 20-plus years — longer than I’ve been mayor — and I just love to see how everybody comes out to help. I love being a part of all of this. You can see how generous everybody’s been here with the amount of contributions that were just rounded up just this morning,” he said.

He thanked the community profusely and asks that people keep donating even when it’s not the holidays.

Over at Storehouse West, things were busy as a team of RRPD officers worked fast to unload a large trailer.

Executive Director Joe Mickelson was pleased with the donations, saying it has helped them bolster their low shelves.

“RRPD is always so good to us. The number of families we serve has just grown exponentially, and this will definitely help,” he said.

After weighing everything that RRPD collected from that trailer and the SWAT unit, it was determined that just over a ton of food — 2,421 pounds — was donated.

“That’s amazing. Every little thing counts for us,” Mickelson said.

After all the food was unloaded, officers returned to duty. Reedy said that even though they are happy to do this food drive, they can’t have department vehicles out of commission for very long, and they all went back to work serving the city.

More than three tons of food was collected for St. Felix Pantry during the RRPD event.